CIA leaked intelligence on Israeli-backed coups against U.S. allies

(WMR)—During the Cold War, the CIA was so incensed at the role played by Mossad in coups and attempted coups against U.S. allies, it began leaking information to the media concerning the role played by Israeli Mossad agents and “dual loyalists” within the CIA’s own ranks about Israeli interference in the politics of America’s NATO allies.

And in what could prove embarrassing for America’s new Secretary of State, John Kerry, the Mossad amassed a large dossier on the leftist military officers who overthrew the right-wing regime of Portuguese Prime Minister Marcello Caetano in 1974. One of the files possessed by Mossad deals with a Portuguese naval officer from Mozambique and an ardent Portuguese Communist who supported the leftist Armed Forces coup of April 25, 1974, one Lieutenant Jose Pedro Simoes Ferreira.

In 1974, Israel maintained close relations with the apartheid regime of South Africa and many South African Jewish Zionists were also invested in Mozambique business, particularly diamond exploration and mining. The thought of Portugal granting independence to left-wing governments (and future voting allies of the Arab nations in the United Nations) was anathema to Israel and South African Jews. Therefore, in 1975, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger dispatched CIA official Frank Carlucci as ambassador to Portugal to help identify and purge the more extreme factions in the new Portuguese government, particularly the Communists. One individual who was seen as a prime target was Simoes Ferreira. However, the CIA had its hands tied when it discovered that Senhor Ferreira had an influential brother-in-law, John Heiniz III, an heir to the H.J. Heinz Company but more importantly an ambitious Republican congressman from Pennsylvania. Simoes Ferreira is the older brother of Teresa Simoes-Ferreira Heinz, who is now Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of the new U.S. Secretary of State.

Mossad was more than happy to pick up the slack, obtaining as much intelligence on Teresa and her brother Jose from their friends in South African intelligence.

During the 2004 presidential campaign, Republican Party operatives working for Karl Rove were trying to dig up dirt on Mrs. Kerry’s left-wing ties while she was a student in South Africa. But former Navy Lt. Simoes Ferreira, who is now 78 and lives outside of Pittsburgh, never came up on Rove’s political radar screen.

However, the same is not true for the Mossad, which, along with South Africa’s Bureau of State Security (BOSS), gathered a massive amount of intelligence from the Portuguese intelligence files in then-Lourenço Marques intelligence center in Mozambique before the coming to power of the Marxist National Liberation Front (FRELIMO) government in 1975. It is certain that Mossad will use its files on Kerry’s wife and brother-in-law to forestall any strong-arming of Israel by the State Department over Israeli settlement expansion on the West Bank. The Israelis can rely on its neo-conservative operatives in the American media, people like William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer, to pound away at two ex-Portuguese colonials who saw Communism as being much more preferable than the fascism they lived under.

One possible reason why the Israel Lobby refrained from using a “red hammer” on Kerry during his confirmation hearing is Kerry’s own paternal Jewish grand parentage and the fact that his brother Cameron Kerry is a convert to Judaism and a strong supporter of Israel.

Thanks to CIA assets in Portugal and Carlucci’s espionage work as ambassador, the leftward trend of the Portuguese coup was halted, thanks mostly to the coming to power in 1976 of Portuguese Socialist Party leader Mario Soares, a paid CIA asset, who eased out from power the pro-Communist and anti-banker General Vasco dos Santos Gonçalves, a leader of the 1974 Carnation Revolution. After serving as President of Portugal, Soares became the head of the European Union’s Inter-parliamentary Delegation for Relations with Israel.

CIA documents also reveal that Mossad played a supporting role in the 1981 attempted military coup in Spain. On February 23, 1981, Spanish Lt. Col. Antonio Tejero, who tried and failed to conduct a rightist coup in 1978—Operation Galaxia—stormed the Spanish Congress of Deputies, along with 200 Civil Guard troops, and attempted to oust the incoming Prime Minister Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, a royalist who favored Spain’s entry into NATO but someone who also favored maintaining Spain’s close ties with the Arab world. Tejero and the other military generals who supported the coup against the government secretly promised Israel that they would alter Spain’s traditional pro-Arab foreign policy and be less friendly to the Arabs. Therefore, Mossad agents worked with the coup plotters to carry out a traditional Israeli bloodbath operation.

The Civil Guard occupying the Spanish parliament removed acting Prime Minister Adolfo Suarez, opposition Socialist leader Felipe Gonzalez, deputy Socialist leader Alfonso Guerra Gonzalez, and Communist Party leader Jose Santiago Carrillo from the chamber for probable execution after being tortured. Meanwhile, a military revolt supporting the coup broke out in Valencia. Only the intervention of King Juan Carlos I put down the putsch but not before key neo-conservatives and Zionists in the Reagan administration signaled their support for the coup. It was later revealed that some members of the Reagan administration as well as key Opus Dei adherents inside the Vatican had given their nod to the coup beforehand. The action is yet another indication of the close relationship between international Zionism and Opus Dei, the fascist order of the Roman Catholic Church.

The CIA also became aware of the close ties between French Socialist presidential candidate Francois Mitterand, a collaborator of the German Nazis and Vichy government of France during World War II, and Israel’s Mossad and its then-Prime Minister Menahem Begin. Israel and French Jews provided Mitterand with financial support in the 1981 election against President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, who maintained Charles De Gaulle’s policy of maintaining close ties with the Arab nations. Mitterand defeated Giscard d’Estaing and in 1982, Mitterand became the first president of the Fifth Republic to visit Israel.

In 1961, the Mossad supported a coup by leading right-wing French generals against De Gaulle’s decision to grant Algeria independence. Not only did Israel support the attempted coup but Algeria’s large and wealthy Jewish community also lent their support to the putsch. One of the coup plotters, General André Zeller, received support from Israel, South Africa. and Portugal for the coup. General Maurice Challe, the commander of Allied Forces Central Europe and a commander of French forces during the British-French-Israeli invasion of Suez in 1956, also supported the coup. After the coup’s failure, Challe became an official of the Israeli shipping company Zim. Another coup plotter, General Edmond Jouhand, became the deputy head of the anti-De Gaullr Secret Army Organization (OAS) after the coup’s failure and in 1982, he was rehabilitated by Mitterand. Mitterand also pardoned OAS head and chief coup plotter General Raoul Salan. In 1958, chief coup political leader, retired former Algeria Governor General Jacques Soustelle, received amnesty from De Gaulle. As with the coup plotting generals and other military officers in Spain in 1981, the 1961 coup plotters in France—Zeller, Challe, Jouhand, Dalan, and Soustelle—were all known as “Israel’s men” in France.

A new generation of “Israel’s men” continue to plague Western nations, particularly the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and America.